I will be upfront, here: I am not a fan of "Man of Steel." I thought there were some good parts. Amy Adams is the first perfect casting for Lois Lane in any of the Superman films. Russell Crowe was great as Jor El. The crystalline version of Krypton was getting a little stale, so I liked its version of the planet. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these elements to make the movie good as a whole. Despite this, I went to "Batman v Superman" anyway, hoping some improvements would have been made.

Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) has raced to Metropolis during the chaos created by General Zod in the climax of "Man of Steel." Despite telling the man in charge of the Metropolis branch of Wayne Industries to evacuate, many people still die when the building is damaged by the fight between Superman and Zod. This creates a deep-seated hatred in him for Superman.

Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), on the other hand, sees Batman as a dangerous vigilante, especially since he has recently taken to branding a bat symbol onto criminals. He is as obsessed with Batman as Bruce is with Superman. On top of this, he's dealing with the country divided about whether or not to trust him, someone who's not only an alien, but one with God-like powers and has already shown he can nearly destroy an entire city if not kept in check.

They both end up in the middle of a scheme being cooked up by entrepreneur Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). He has plans that will hopefully take both the alien and the vigilante out of the picture for good. A mysterious woman named Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has also shown up on the scene, causing some minor problems for Bruce.

Just like "Man of Steel," there are some good things within this over-bloated monstrosity of a movie, but they can't come together to equal a great movie. I'll start with the good.

I really enjoyed Affleck's performance, probably because he's more Bruce than Bat throughout the picture, only donning the suit in a couple action scenes and for the climax. He's well suited for the billionaire businessman role, even more so since they somewhat tone down the playboy aspects. The best part of the role is that this is really one of the rare times in any Batman movie that we've seen Bruce get to play detective.

That's really what the character is about in the comics. Heck, one of the Batman titles is Detective Comics, for which the company's initials stand. Most of the other movies have had Batman do the detecting and Bruce analyzing the clues back at the Cave. In this one, Bruce uses his business and society positions to get into places and do some poking around, and I liked that a lot.

The movie also has me looking forward to the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Gal Gadot doesn't have a lot to do in "BvS," but when she's on screen she brings a desperately needed lighter edge to the proceedings. Between this and the two "Fast & Furious" movies she was in, we really haven't gotten a full idea of how strong of an actress she is, since she'll eventually have to carry an entire movie. I feel her upcoming one, "Criminal," will be the make or break for that opinion. We'll see in a couple weeks.

The movie's biggest problem, once again, is Superman. He just mopes around for most of the film, constantly questioning if he should keep on being a superhero because so many people in the world seem to hate him. He's almost so emo at times that I'm surprised he wasn't sporting thick, black eyeliner and wearing a Cure t-shirt instead of his usual Superman tights. He's so dark and depressing that it works against the character. Instead of making the audience feel for him and his inner conflict, it just makes him completely unsympathetic. When you can't care enough about one of the heroes in a superhero mashup movie like this, then the rest of the film suffers.

Clark even goes to ask Ma Kent (Diane Lane) what he should do and her reply is basically, “Do whatever.” I know she’s trying to tell him he has to make his own decision, but that’s not what he needs at that moment. He needs some motherly advice, as we all do in tough times. When the woman who’s supposed to try keeping him on the right path appears to have given up helping him, how are we as an audience supposed to care, either?

Director Zack Snyder’s action scenes here are mostly pretty bland. They’re serviceable and well designed, they just weren't very exciting. It never felt like there was any immediate danger to the heroes. The only times the action was exciting and fun was, once again, when Wonder Woman was on the scene. She's having such a blast fighting the big bad, Doomsday, during the climax that you can't help but smile along with her. In fact, the best thing this franchise can do is find a way to harness the lighter tone when she's on the screen and spread it out over the entire runtime for the other movies.

Speaking of this as a franchise, “BvS” is supposed to be the beginning of DC’s version of the Marvel Movie Universe. We get brief glimpse at three more heroes who will be a part of the Justice League movie next year. That’s right, DC is doing things backward. We will get the team-up movie before the origin movies. Imagine if Marvel’s Phase 1 had started with “The Avengers?” We probably wouldn’t have gotten a Phase 2.

Also, when Marvel’s films hint at an upcoming hero with some sort of Easter egg, the comic nerd in me gets genuinely excited. When I saw the future heroes in “BvS” it was underwhelming, to say the least. That’s not because I prefer one comic universe over the other, it just wasn’t handled well. One friend of mine even thought it felt like it had been tacked on at the last minute. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but it’s not the way you want fans to react to that sort of preview to the next films.

What it boils down to, I guess, is your reaction to “BvS” will probably depend on how well you liked “Man of Steel.” I personally found the same flaws hampered both movies, but you may feel different.